The WSSG Community Lead Blog

Thanks to everyone who responded. We had a lot of responses this year and I appreciate the time and energy that a lot of you spent in sharing your thoughts on the SBS Community. I plan to share the findings here and hopefully everyone will gain a better understanding of how others think of the SBS Community.

Kevin

I figured a new blog post would be better than continuing a thread of comments on the previous blog post. Where is the love? The SBS Community Survey is floundering with very few responses. 

 Results from previous surveys have been posted on this blog. I probably could have done a better job of talking about the action items I took from the last year's survey results. My posts, may have not been to the depth that some of you are looking for, but I have talked about the survey and it's purpose on numerous occassions. Here are some old posts that shed some light on what things the SBS team got out of previous surverys: So, what have I learned so far....., SBS Community Survey Update and Commitments for the SBS Community Lead, I have made some preliminary changes to the SBS Community Page, In response to your feedback, I create a pretty cool little search tool...., The Survey is closing down at the end of the month,

I will try to do a better job this year talking about what action items we decide to take based on this years feedback. Looks like from Viajys comments, there are issues with the SBSC program. To that point. If you have more feedback you want to provide on the SBSC program please take the survey again and keep submitting additional feedback. Because this survey is anonymous, there is not limitation on how many times you can stuff the ballot box. Think of this as Dancing with the Stars or American Idol. I promise we will categorize and priotize the feedback and get this feedback to the people who can effect the most change. 

 Answers / Responses to your questions:

Question/ comment: "The survey refers several times to the "Windows SBS Community" without defining what that term means. Is it limited to the SBS Community Resources listed in the survey? Is that a generally accepted definition? It would be interesting to know how many people could even list what the SBS Community Resources are without any hints. How many people would consider PSS to be part of the Community?"

Answer/reply: The Windows SBS Community is whatever you define as the SBS Community. I am not in the position to define what our community is. So, no it is not limited to the SBS Community Resources listed in the survey. So, this is not a generally accepted definition or an attempt at a definition. It is what I have defined along with numerous other Community Lead across Microsoft as Categories of Community Resources that could at least be bucketed, rated, and commented on. Think of them as conversation starters. These areas/resources are typically what I point people on the product team at as an area where the community is having a conversation either directly with us, with each other, or us with them. In terms of TechNet and Blogs, it is more one way than two way, but they are generally accepted WEB 2.0 Apps that allow feedback to flow back to us.

Question/ comment: "- The concept of "value" is somewhat vague. Each resource listed can potentially be of great value or zero value, depending on when and how it is used. Some resources are better for general product and sales information, some are better for ongoing education and training, some are better for troubleshooting, etc. If one of the resources gets higher scores than another, it doesn't necessarily mean that the "losing" resource is no good. - Expanding on that last point, it might have been better if you had said "here is a list of 10 questions that someone working with SBS might have. For each question, how likely would you be to consult each of these community resources in search of an answer?" If, hypothetically speaking, you found that there was a 90% chance that people puzzled by an error message would go to third-party web sites but only a 30% chance that they'd go to the MS KB, then you'd know something was very wrong with the KB."

Answer/reply: Maybe you missed my blog post, but my major focus is to get the product team engaged with the community. The survey is a good indicator/validation engine of where I should direct the product team to focus the most attention. I do not take a low score on a specific community resource as a vote to do away with a given resource. I look at the verbatims as well and see if there is a coorelation. Sometimes, we conclude that the community finds little value in the resource, but because it is just that we have not given it enough attention and that they are upset that we have not spent more time keeping the resource up to date.

Applying a rating allows us to look for trends year over year. This is a generally accepted practice. The survey folks along with a lot of other Community Leads at Microsoft helped me design the survey and the questions. We intentionally made the questions ambiguous and we also used a very common rating system of 1 to 5 that we use in most other MSFT surveys. 

Question/ comment: Your rationale for not changing the questions from year to year makes perfect sense IF the basic survey design is sound. But the basic survey design here is fundamentally questionable because you're not getting a random sample. You're only getting motivated respondents, and you really have no way of knowing which way that will skew the answers. And even if it were a random sample, the collection of the same meaningless data year after year does not make it meaningful. (I'm thinking of question 5 in particular.) 

Answer/reply: I will break up my response to this in two parts.

1. OK, first, if this statement were true, than the average sat numbers would be skewed year over year; "the basic survey design here is fundamentally questionable because you're not getting a random sample. You're only getting motivated respondents, and you really have no way of knowing which way that will skew the answers." OK, here are the numbers for the last two years and this year's, so far; 80% answered with a 4 or 5 two years ago, 82% last year and this year, 79%. Not a huge skew at all. Sample sizes are about the same. We are now at 544 responses (thank you very much everyone). The percentages are very close to the same if you look at how many responded with a 1, 2, 3, 4,.or 5. I am just giving you the Percentage Satisfied Sample.
2. What are you talking about?  "And even if it were a random sample, the collection of the same meaningless data year after year does not make it meaningful. (I'm thinking of question 5 in particular.)"
   Here is question 5; "On a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is not satisfied and 5 is very satisfied, how satisfied are you with your experience in the Windows SBS Community?" What is wrong with this question? How is this meaningless? This data is not meaningless. The more years I have this data, the less meaningless it becomes. Especially when I am using the same methods for recruiting people to take the survey (More on that later) and also especially since the in the last three years this number is with 3%. That to me is phenomenal. Other questions have have had a larger skew and in all cases thus far, the comments have supported the upward or downward trend.

Question/ comment: In my experience, many SBSers turn to search engines when looking for answers. Those search engines may spit back answers from several different community resources at once. Am I really supposed to remember how many times a search engine brought me to TechNet as opposed to a KB article as opposed to something at www.microsoft.com as opposed to a newsgroup post, etc.? 

Answer/reply: Search Engines is one of the top identified Community Resources under questions 15 - 18. I understand that a lot of people do not make the distinction on what was the final site that they landed on. What they say is that they use a search engine and RSS feeds to get their information. I make special note of this. This is why I do a lot of work to make sure our team does not spin up a thousand blogs and stay with one so that the amount of information is pooled in one place on the web and search engines discover our blog more often when people are searching for something on our product.  Check out what happens to teams who have 10's of blogs. They are not easily discovered and their community suffers because no one can find the answer that they so eloquently posted on their very little traffic blog site.

To your point "and it may be why your response rate is low. Perhaps there are hundreds or thousands of people who have reviewed the survey questions and have decided that it's not worth answering" completely and utterly false. The hit count to the survey is almost an exact match to the amount of responses.  The problem is that people are simply not going to the survey. So, when you do not encourage people to provide us feedback it is directly coorelated to low responses, not poor survey design.    

Question/ comment: I commend you for trying to get feedback on various resources, but why are you using this tool? If I recall correctly, CSS and the monitored newsgroups have their own satisfaction surveys that immediately follow the incident. If I were the CSS manager, I'd put a lot more stock in comments and ratings from people who had just finished receiving support than from people who may or may not have had any interaction with CSS in the last year. (Just because you tell people to base their ratings on the last 12 months doesn't mean they will.) As for gathering data on which MS community resources are preferred by the community, surely you have a more objective way of measuring that. For example, I assume you know exactly how many people attend each SBS webcast, event, chat, etc., and I know that most of these events ask participants for satisfaction ratings at the end. That must be a more valid indicator of popularity and satisfaction than what you're getting from the survey. I also assume that you know how many hits and inbound links are associated with each KB article, TechNet article, MS blog, SBS page, etc. Again, this objective data ought to be given more weight than the 5-point-scale ratings of some self-selected survey respondents.

Answer/reply: We chose to steer away from asking targeted and leading questions. TechNet, CSS with Newsgroups, Webcasts, etc. already has it's own survey engine to see if an article hit the mark. What we are tying to find out is are some people not even going to TechNet. If somoeone marks it as a 1 or 2 and then says in their comments, "I don't even use TechNet anymore. Every time I have read the content, it has bbeen useless / stale/ not detailed enough/ etc...." this is uesful data to us. It tells us that we are not retaining our customers and we need to do a better job to make better content. I am trying to catch the feedback that TechNet is not getting.

Susan quoted me here and I will put it in again, "Because of the previous surveys, we have made some adjustments in our community engagement. To name a few; we really worked on putting more focus on the Official SBS Blog. Our Sustaining Engineering team runs mini betas with our MVPs before KB's and Bug Fixes are released via Windows Update. We try to get more involvement in our techbetas from our User Groups. The list does go on."

Do you know why Vista Sp1 is not available as an automatic update via WSUS yet? Because of the MVPs participating in our early SE Betas and the relationship that they have developed with our SE team. WSUS had a bug that caused any Cab file over 500 megs to fail to pass a WinVerifyTrust and subsequently, WSUS will continue to try to download the Cab. The fix was created, but not available except if you called CSS. The SBS MVPs helped us push the WinSE team to force this fix as a critical fix on WSUS for 2 months prior to making SP1 available to avoid anyone having this endless download loop condition from occurring. So, actually, this Survey has has a direct impact on the way that we engage with our community and ultimately has made life easier and not harder for the community.  SP1 is potentially going to be available via WSUS this month based on our final assessment of the uptake of the critical fix.

Trust me, we do look at all the responses and take action based on the feedback. This is my job. I love my job and I love being a community lead.

 Thanks for all of your feedback,

 Kevin Beares
Community Lead - WSSG

Hey all,

 Please pass the word to anyone who is interested that if you were having any problems with gaining access to either EBS 2008 or SBS 2008, you should be able to go get it now.

Some people were getting redirected to the main MS.com page when they clicked on the Get it now link. It was an issue with the Live ID and Registration part of the page. If you had logged in with Live ID to a different MS property like TechNet or MSDN and then came to the SBS or EBS page, you could end up being redirected to the main MS.com page because the registration errored out.

 We hope to have all these issues resolved now. So, go get it now, if you haven't already.

 If you blog or know anyone who does have our communities ear, please pass it on. Here is the link to the announcement for SBS:

 http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2008/05/28/announcing-small-business-server-2008-rc0-public-preview.aspx

 Thanks,

 Kevin

OK, I thought this would be like shooting fish a barrel, but apparently, this isn't the case. So far we have had 250 responses in 2 weeks. At this rate, we will set a new record for the least amount of responses in a month by a country mile.

Is everyone so busy that they can't spare about 5 minutes to take this? Has the SBS Community taken a sabatical? Does anyone care?

Seriously, folks. We care an awful lot and we really want to hear from you. Please take a few minutes and tell us what you think. I promise we will follow up on your feedback and do what we can to make your voices heard.

Here is the link:  SBS WW Community Survey 2008

 Thanks again,

Kevin

Just a heads up if you didn't already here the announcement, but you can go get the public preview of SBS 2008 today.

 http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2008/05/28/announcing-small-business-server-2008-rc0-public-preview.aspx

 What distiinguishes this public preview from the techbeta is really the location of the download and the intent. The techbeta's primary goal is and has been feedback. We are still running the techbeta. The public preview is mainly for people to evaluate and prepare for the launch and general availability of SBS 2008 in the second half of CY 2008.

 We launched a new public newsgroup for SBS 2008 as well. Go to http://connect.microsoft.com/sbs08 for more details on the public newsgroup.

 Thanks,

 Kevin

Hey everyone,

 Thanks to all of you who have already responded to the SBS WW Community Survey 2008.

I have had almost 200 responses so far. I would love it if we could get close to 2,000 responses this year. We got over 700 last year and we learned a ton. The reason why I would like a lot more responses is because I have more help to chew on the data. We had a huge impact on a lot of the other supporting teams like the Community team that works on forums, blogs, etc... As well as the TechNet and Product Support teams.

If you are blogging my survey out to the people who read your blog, can you do me a huge favor and keep blogging reminders? It would be extremely helpful to getting more of our community engaged in providing very useful feedback.

A note about the questions and design of the survey:
In order to keep some statistical relevance, the survey has not been changed much from the previous two years. Since we now have 3 years of data, I am looking to make some changes for next years survey. So, if you have suggestions on other questions you think I should be asking, please let me know.

Just remember that the goal for the survey is to learn from the SBS Community. We want to know what is working, what is not working and how we can help in making your experience better.

Thanks for listening and all of your support over the years.

Kevin

This is the third year we have published an SBS WW Community Survey to the SBS Community. 

We have learned an amazing amount of information from the people who have taken the time to tell us what they thought. Some things we kind of knew already, but other things were not as clear before we had received the feedback.

Because of the previous surveys, we have made some adjustments in our community engagement. To name a few; we really worked on putting more focus on the Official SBS Blog. Our Sustaining Engineering team runs mini betas with our MVPs before KB's and Bug Fixes are released via Windows Update. We try to get more involvement in our techbetas from our User Groups. The list does go on.

To the survey, the SBS Product Team would like to hear from the Windows SBS Community again. This survey is completely anonymous. In fact, some of you may have to sign out from Live in order to take the survey. So, if you get a PAGE NOT FOUND error message, please log out of Live and click on the link to the survey again.

We want to know how valuable your experience is with the community resources and information that is available to you today as a member of the Windows SBS Community. We also want to know what you think could be done to improve your Windows SBS Community Experience. Please take a couple of minutes to provide us your candid feedback via this survey and let us know what you think.

 SBS WW Community Survey 2008

 Thanks in advance for your feedback.

 Kevin Beares
Community Lead - WSSG

I posted the following comment on Sean's blog post about whether you are Company Centric or Customer Centric. http://communitygrouptherapy.com/2008/05/17/community-strategy-are-you-company-centric-or-customer-centric/ . Along with my thoughts below, I think honestly answering Sean's question is a very challenging one.

“Within our company, what is the #1 thing we celebrate?”

I know that we definitely answer that question with ship date. I think collectively, all of our product teams on the WSSG do and so does everyone else at Micosoft. However, there are A LOT of people within Microsoft who don't really celebrate this date. I know for one, I don't. Becasue of the points that Sean pointed out as well as the examples I laid out below.  I often wonder a lot when we hit our date and ship the product, "is this release going to resonate with our customers and community?" "Are they simply feeling let down or are they freaking jazzed about what we accomplished? "

I know as a past support professional for over 12 years of my career, I dreaded the release date. You know why? I got to find out what the product missed. I got all of the calls on; what didn't get fixed, what features we promised that we didn't deliver on, I got to respond to the newsgroups posts that were basically flame thrower threads etc... We (support) were the glue that held the product together. In some cases, past companies included this was more true than in other cases.

With Windows Home Server, I really think we really did deliver something genuinely great. For the first time, I really was pumped to get out there and meet with our customers and tell them everything there was to say about our product. We had an open beta, we had our conversations with our community in public on the web forums (we didn't hide out in a beta newsgroup). we exposed customer feedback and our responses on MS Connect and continue to be open to feedback to this day on MS Connect. However, we found a bug that has eroded a lot of customer confidence. I think that our saving grace is that our community feels a part of this product. When we get this fix out there, I think we will get a lot of that customer love back. I just hope that the team can keep their customer-centric focus and not be blinded by release dates.  A release date is important, but it cannot be the only goal.

Thanks for the inspiration to talk more about this Sean.

 Kevin 

My Comment on Sean's blog: 

I think you bring up some great points Sean. When you hear Steve B say at the MVP Summit, "Vista, a work in progress", where did he get that opinion from. He certainly would not have said that if he based the success of Vista on the launch date being hit. Clearly, we did not achieve an unwritten objective, win the hearts and minds of our customers. Instead, there is actually a community back lash movement where our community are advocating one of two things; upgrade to XP or go with brand X (Apple, Linux, or something else). http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/15/1944206 and from Dell's own support forums, http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=vista&message.id=50277

I think Vista is a perfect case study for where hitting an ship date was not the right goal.  I think we at Microsoft need to look inside and think of way to capitalize on some other goal(s). Maybe we still can keep our first goal to ship, but the dependent goal(s) is that we get a 4 out of 5 or higher rating from our Community Buzz analysis and/ or we have/give members of our community (Self nominated) sign off on our product.

These members of our community could be self selected via some random drawing and they are given the authority to sign off on our product. So, if they collectively say no this product is not ready, then we slip and incorporate their suggestions, bugs, etc.. until they feel that the product has met the customer quality bar.

I would argue that some product teams think that they are doing the above via their beta feedback programs and it is tied to the ship date. The term ZBB comes to mind. ZBB means Zero Bug Bounce.  A ZBB milestone is a best practice and used by just about every team at MS. It is a best practice because it works to force teams to get very serious about shipping. A team can declare they have reached ZBB if there are zero active code change bugs older than 24 hours.

I think that feedback programs (Betas) can have a major flaw. Coming from me, that is scary since I run betas for a lot of Microsoft products. Not to say that I do not think that betas are great way to get community feedback, but they lack something. That je ne sais qua.  How can a feedback program translate to seriously, overwhelming, historical community buy in and achieve?  Did we build a strong word of mouth brand? I think in most cases, the people who are on your beta, already have bought into your technology and will sing your praises anyway, but I bet you if you pressed them on it, they would say that they have mixed emotions about your release. Becasue of a number of factors that they were exposed to during the beta. One would be the transparency of the decisions we made in order to meet our ship dates. It probably left at least some of them at the altar. I know in the cases of SBS 2008 and Windows Home Server PP1, I think some people are pretty ticked that some features did not make or have been annouced are not making the final cut and we haven't even shipped yet.

I have a feeling that if we changed our model to really identify these (seems like) little things that probably we may have a better chance of achieving or exceeding on the goal of building a strong word of mouth brand.

Just my thoughts.

Kevin

You have to check out some pretty cool stuff our Marketing team put out recently.

So how many times has someone asked you "Can I add multiple servers to an SBS domain?". The SBS team decided it was time to do something about it so now, they are working on dispelling some of the most common and not so common SBS myths, one crazy video at a time. So the next time you encounter this or any other SBS myth, just respond with: "Yes, you can. Check this dude out: http://sbsguru.spaces.live.com/default.aspx"

If you have other ideas for some videos, let me know and I will pass it on to the team.

Thanks,

Kevin

Hey everyone,

Just thought I would share with you some BIG News!  The Windows Essential Business Server Team has a new blog. 

http://blogs.technet.com/EssentialBusinessServer/

This will be the official EBS team blog.  We have several goals for the team blog:

• Provide information to press, partners, and customers to learn about the product
• Provide insights into the why's behind the product
• Be an open and transparent place to discuss aspects of the product (technical issues, shortcomings, etc...)

 I am really looking forward to reading this blog. We have learned so many valuable things from our TAP and Techbeta programs thus far and the team has a lot to share about thier learnings and what we they are thinking about.

Thanks,

Kevin

Hey everyone, 

The User Research team is looking for and inviting select customers to participate in a user research study.  They are looking to learn from companies who perform IT services for their own customers, such as backing up data, managing/installing patches, and keeping AV software up-to-date.  They would like to come to your office to talk with one or more people who perform IT services for clients and learn from them.

It is important for you to know that you do not need to do anything to prepare for this. They want to learn from you, the experts, so that they can determine what needs to be improved in our software. This also gives you the chance to tell them what your needs and wants are, and meet with some members of their product development team.

As you know Microsoft highly values feedback from the community. They will be offering you free Microsoft software in appreciation of your time and participation in this research.

If this is something that you or others at your company would be interested in, please let them know by mailing itvisits@microsoft.com.  They are currently scheduling site visits in North America for February.

Thanks to Susan for her post on this research as well. http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2008/01/22/microsoft-wants-to-learn-from-us.aspx

Thanks again,

Kevin

Hey Everyone,

We have a new name! Please pass the word out if you can. I really appreciate all of your support over the last year getting the word out via your blogs. We have had a huge level of interest in the Techbeta and we are currently evaluating expanding the level of participants in the program in the near future. So, if you are interested, see the instructions below for applying to participate in the TechBeta.

Windows® Essential Business Server is the new Microsoft server solution for small to medium businesses, with 50 to 250 client computers in their organizations. Windows®Essential Business Server offers a standardized server configuration that is designed to meet the needs of most midsize businesses. The configuration is optimized to meet the currently recommended practices for networking, security, collaboration, and remote access. The tightly integrated Windows Essential Business Server simplifies setup, migration, and licensing for Microsoft infrastructure server products that a midsize business uses most frequently. Most network services and resources are managed through a single Windows®Essential Business Server Administration Console, which is accessible from anywhere on the network or remotely over a virtual private network.

Windows®Essential Business Server is installed on three physical servers. These are referred to by their primary roles in the network:

·         Windows®Essential Business Server Management Server – Centralizes management of your Windows Server "Centro" network. Enables and manages worker collaboration and network services.

·         Windows®Essential Business Server Security Server – Manages security, Internet access, and remote-worker connectivity.

·         Windows®Essential Business Server Messaging Server – Provides messaging capabilities and manages network services.

If you are interested in joining the Windows®Essential Business Server upcoming Beta 2 effort;

1. Please go to http://connect.microsoft.com,
2. Click on Invitations and sign in with your Windows Live ID (Passport ID).
3. Enter the following invite ID: EBSE-VKDP-276Y. 
4. You will be asked to take a short survey.  
5. Once you complete the survey we will evaluate your application for participation in the Techbeta.
6. Then look for an email from MsftConn@microsoft.com with further details.

Thanks again,

Kevin Beares

Community Lead

Windows Server Solutions Group (WSSG)

Last week was an amazing week... We started off on September 27th and 28th with over 20 MS MVPs (mostly SBS MVPs aka the SBS Family) in town before SMB Nation 2007 for a set of Round Table / Deep Dive / NDA conversations with the Centro, Windows Home Server and SBS teams. The primary objective of these sessions is to drive product feedback from the MVPs to the product teams and also to keep the MVPs up to date on where we are with our development efforts. These sessions basically occur twice a year and are a huge source of information for both the product teams and MVPs who attend. Needless to say, that is all I can share about what goes on at these sessions.

 On Saturday, September 29th, the three day long SMB Nation 2007 Event kicked off. I dropped by for a number of sessions on Sunday, Jeff Middleton's party on Sunday night and a couple more sessions on Monday. The event was on campus in Redmond, WA, so it was pretty easy to drop in. I am glad I was able to attend. There were a number of great technical sessions that the MVPs presented. It was pretty cool to see them in their element. :)

The one thing that became abundantly clear to me while I was hanging out at all the sessions and Jeff’s party was that there was a huge amount of interest in Windows Home Server (WHS).  I cannot tell you how many times I was approached and asked about WHS. It was pretty cool to be able to talk to so many SBSers about WHS. I kind of knew that there was some interest in WHS, but never thought that there would be this much interest. If you don’t believe me that there is a lot of interest, just read Susan’s two blog posts. The buzz at SMBnation ..part two  and The buzz about "Stuff" Server... I mean "Home Server" at SMBnation.

 So, enough background. The BIG Question: "Can I install and run one of more Windows Home Server(s) on an SBS Network to backup my top 10 ( or more) client machines? Is this supported? "

Yes. * There is nothing in our the Windows Home Server Licensing terms of use that prohibit WHS from backing up Domain Joined Machines.  There is also nothing in the SBS Licensing terms of use that prohibit a Windows Home Server from participating in an SBS Network (Home Server does not join the domain, but can run within the network). As Susan stated in her later blog post, you could simply use “Pass through authentication”.

* The only disclaimer I will put in here is that we do not support backing up or running the Windows Home Server Connector software on an SBS Server. I know that Susan was able to install it and backup her server. Heck, Grey Lancaster, our first official WHS MVP did this in the first week that he had WHS installed. He backed up his production SBS server and then ran a restore and it worked. Still, it doesn’t mean that this is a supported scenario because we haven't fully tested it.

Personally, I love Home Server. I have been using it at home for over a year. I frankly cannot live without it. I do not run an SBS Server at home. I have never had a need to ( I bet you most of you could would argue I do), but I can say that I know that a lot of people have already used WHS to backup domain joined machines, both SBS domains as well as large corporate network joined machines. 

Here are the other things that I heard from the SBSers in the crowd at SMB Nation. I cannot argue that WHS would not be a good solution for any of these scenarios:

• Besides My Documents backup, there is no really good solution from Microsoft to backup and restore full clients on an SBS network that is priced for the Small Business space.
• Current third party NAS devices and other third party backup software is not as robust a solution as WHS.
• They stated that the technologies in WHS with backup and DE are far superior to any device that is currently available on the market.
• The ability to virtualize a backup and restore files on the fly was an amazing feature that any IT admin would die to have.
• SBS Partners always need a way to provide additional services to their customers
• They see WHS as being an option that they could provide to their existing SBS customer sites
• With WHS, they can provide an additional service of backing up the business critical non server machines in an office. Just think of the CEO, whose machine goes crash and you don’t have a backup of it. How long will it take you to get the CEO back up and running?
• They see WHS as a low cost solution to lower the cost in supporting existing SBS sites.
• With every installation of SBS comes the added bonus of desktop support. A partner that has 10 SBS installations to support has on average 200 desktops to support as well.
• With lower cost for supporting existing SBS sites, they can now go out and take on more SBS Customers.
• WHS could seriously help them take care of the very predictable one off request by the CXO’s to come customize/support their home network. WHS is a turnkey solution that could get them back to billable hours supporting SBS.
• They do not see WHS as a replacement to SBS.

I hope that you find this helpful.

Thanks, 

Kevin

A lot of you have contacted me lately asking to get in on the Windows Server Code Name Cougar Beta program that we are hosting on MS Connect. Right now, we are at a level of participation that meet our goals for feedback. We are still taking applications for future releases of the beta of Cougar here. http://connect.microsoft.com/cougar. You can fill out the survey and when we get closer to our next milestone, we may be opening up the beta to a larger set of users. At that time, we will get in touch with you to see if you are still interested.

Just some insight on why me made a decision to start off with a smaller beta earlier on the development of Cougar... Often when teams run a beta, they have to balance the level of participation for feedback against other factors. I don't think that there is a software development team in the world that does not struggle with this. Some of the factors that we have to consider when determing the level of participation are; the need to keep the features of the future release of our product confidential in the early stages, we do not want the future release of our product to be a distraction to their purchasing decision, we do not want to let our competitors know too much about what we are doing, to name a few.

We also know that if we do not provide early enough access, our partners will be ill prepared to plan for the next release. We know that people need time to plan for a future release. So, a lot of thought and discussion has gone into this. So, we will do our best to provide as early a look as we can with future builds of Cougar. So, if you are interester, please go up to the link I mentioned earlier and register your interest.

Thanks a lot,

Kevin

So, how do you provide feedback to Microsoft today? What I am talking about when I say feedback is a bug or a suggestion like you would on a beta. I know that participating in a Beta like the Windows Home Server Beta is one way to get in your suggestions and bugs to the product team, but how do you do it on RTM product? For this conversation I want to focus completely on simply providing feedback to Microsoft to improve the quality of the product.

Now, I want to immediately remove one scenario from this discussion. The scenario is a bug that is impacting you today that you cannot get around and you need help. In these cases, you should always get help from either Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) or another Microsoft Partner or Consultant.

The methods that I know of that exist today for providing feedback to the Microsoft Product teams are the following:

1. Newsgroup or Web Forum. You can post a suggestion or bug in a newsgroup or Web Forum and hope that the thread attracks enough attention that someone at Microsoft or someone like an MVP or a Microsoft Partner pick it up and do something about it. The problem with this technique is that is unreliable, and is inconsistent. The other problem is that it is not a communication technique that allows for the loop to be closed on the feedback. The customer is left with an empty feeling in their stomach because while they may have gotten the issue off their chest, there is no closure in most cases.
2. Blog or Personal Web Page. Of course you can always get the issue off your chest by blogging about it. But again, for the same reasons as I mention above this is not a very reliable technique and the there is no closure. The only exception is when your blog or web site has a Big Audience. In these cases, usually issues raised on these very influencial community sites get Microsoft's attention. The funny thing is, usually these people already have an inside track and usually do not blog about it first.They usually just their contacts within Microsoft to get an issue raised. The problem with this technique is it really the voice of the customer or just a vocal minority. In cases where the feedback comes from an MVP or someone who is a very prominent member in the community, the feedback is usually spot on because these individuals have gotten pretty adept at triaginig everything they have read out on the net and been able to raise the issue that they see as the most pressing.
3. As I mentioned above, you can always engage with CSS for a bug or suggestion even if the intent of the feedback you want to provide is to simply pass along an idea or an observation. The two options you have with CSS is either pay Microsoft for the case or send a letter. With the pay option you will get a full refund if your situation is indeed a bug, but in the case of a suggestion your only option is to send a letter. With this option CSS will research your bug all the way through and the benefit of this technique is that you do get closure most of the time. You will at least get a explanation of what Microsoft plans to do about the bug. The letter option is kind of like option 1 and 2 above. It makes it to the team, but there is no closure. It is kind of like MSWish used to be.
4. So, last, but not least. In some cases, some teams are using MS Connect for enabling feedback with their customer base. The only two that I know of today is the Visual Studio Team and the Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) team. I was responsible for the MOM team turning on MS Connect for the general public. What is interesting about this technique is that the two teams each have taken different approaches to this channel of feedback. In the case of MOM, the volume is so low, they simply roll the feedback up into their Sustaining Engineering team. In the case of Visual Studio, from what I understand, they have a team that helps triage and look at the feedback. They give feedback to the customers on what they are doing with the feedback and they also get the issues onto the teams radar.

So, here is what I am thinking. I would like to enable the last option of turning on MS Connect to the general public for Windows Home Server RTM and also Small Business Server R2 RTM this year.  So, why haven't I done it already you ask? I think it all comes down to bacisally 2  to 3 issues/points of discussion that are all related to one another and overlap in a number of ways;

1. How do you prevent this solution from being a black hole? The fear is about setting expectations with the community. If you provide this channel to the community, how do set and meet the expectations? I think a lot of people on the product team side of the fence believe that if we enable this feedback channel, each and every issue needs to be responded to. I think this is a unfair expectation that the product team puts on itself. I do not think that the community actually realistically believes that we have the ability to simply staff enough people on our team to handle any and all feedback on a one for one basis especially in the case of our mainstream products like Windows Server and Office. I think Windows Home Server and SBS fall into the mainstream bucket. In the case of  the MOM product which I already mentioned is using Connect to capture feedback on their RTM product, they get about 5 pieces of feedback a week which actually scales for them where they can handle and respond to each piece of feedback on a one for one basis.
2. How do you staff/fund it? This to me is a pretty interesting discussion if you actually manage the expectations of the customers from the first point above. If we told the community at large that we want your feedback and we are providing a channel for you to communicate this feeback, but we have a a few rules for this feedback would the community have an issue with it?
   
• What if we said for example that we will only look at a bug feedback item that has a minimum of 10 votes, has an aveage rating of 4 or above and 5 validations at minimum? And that if you want to get the bug to meet this bar, you have to help us get the votes, rating and validations? You all already know how to do this today. You post a link to the bug on Connect on the web forum/newsgroup and/or blog and you ask people to weigh in on the feedback item.
  
• Would the community really have an issue with this? We at least are providing a way for feedback to be logged, tracked, triaged, and responded to on a very large scale unlike any of the other techniques mentioned above.  The other important point is that the throttle can be adjusted. If the throttle is too wide open and we get overwhelmed we can always pull back and require more votes and/or a higher average rating, and/or a higher number of validations. Conversely, we could always open the throttle wider if we could handle a larger volume.
  
3. What is the process for handling this feedback? Who is going to watch this channel and be on the hook to respond to the issues? I touched upon this before, but if we were to set the expectation of the customer, and if we could throttle the level of feedback that is coming in from the community, what do we do with the feedback? I think it is pretty simple from this point. If we meet the first two points above, the need for additional staff is not necessary. The existing Sustaining Engineering and Product teams should be able to absorb this additional channel with only minimal amount of adjustments to their process because the feedback is being throttled.

There are a number of side benefits of doing this:

1. There is a single place where all community feedback lives.
2. The loop can be closed for the issues that are looked at by the product team.
3. The SE, CSS, and Product teams can look at this feedback at any time to gain additional knowledge of the issues that are effecting the community.
4. In the case of SE, this could potentially shorten the time to resolution on an issue that came in from CSS. They be working on a case that they do not have enough information to go on. If they had a database of bugs that came in via the Connect channel there may find a bug that is very similar if not the same that had the additional information that could help them resolve the case faster.

So, what I need from you is a thumbs up/ thumbs down on this idea. What do you all think about this idea?

Thanks for listening.

Kevin Beares
Community Lead
WSSG (Windows Home Server, SBS, Centro)